Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

The mosquito had drunk well, and not just of Craig either. His stomach turning over, he quickly inspected the creature’s dinner which was smeared across his arm, a red blotch in the shape of Madagascar, almost an inch long. Craig wondered whose blood it was, given that the mozzie had barely had enough time to sink its needle beneath his skin. Some other drinker’s? Craig looked about. Not that of the Italian in the tight briefs, he hoped. Nor ideally had it come from either of the two South African rugby players sitting splayed-legged at the front by the railing.

He spat on to a paper tissue and wiped his arm vigorously without giving it another look until he was sure it had to be clear. The energy from the slap had been used up bursting the balloon of blood; the mosquito’s empty body, split but relatively intact, was stuck to Craig’s arm like an empty popsicle wrapper.

This bothered him less than the minutest trace of blood still inside the dead insect’s glassy skin.

When he looked up, the blonde girl had joined a group of Europeans—Scandinavians or Germans by the look of them—and was eagerly working her way into their telling of travellers’ tales, while the young tout glared angrily at the bank of clouds obscuring the sun, his left leg vibrating like a wire. Craig hoped he wasn’t angry enough to get nasty. Doubted it—after all, chances were this sort of thing happened a lot up here. The kid couldn’t expect a hundred percent strike rate.

Craig gave it five minutes, then went over and sat next to the kid. Kid turned around and Craig started talking.

Ten minutes later, Craig and the kid both left, though not together. Craig was heading for Mazson’s Hotel and bed; the kid, his timetable for the following day sorted, having spoken to Craig, was heading home as well—home for him being his family’s crumbling apartment in the heart of the Stone Town, among the rats and the rubbish and the running sewage. To be fair, the authorities were tackling the sewage, but they hadn’t yet got as far as the kid’s block.

The group that Alison, the blonde girl, had joined was approached by another tout, an older, taller fellow. More confident than the kid, not so much driven by other motivations, less distracted—he had a job to do. With her new companions, Alison was not so nervous about getting into the trips business. She wanted to go to Prison Island, they all did; they looked around to include her as the tout waited for an answer, and she nodded, smiling with relief. Turned out they were German, two of them, the two girls, but naturally they spoke perfect English; the third girl and the boy, who appeared to be an item, were Danish, but you wouldn’t know it—their English, spoken with American accents, was pretty good too.

“We were just in Goa,” said Kristin, one of the German girls. “It is so good. Have you been?”

“No,” Alison shook her head. “But I’d like to go. I’ve heard about it.” She’d heard about it all right. About the raves and the beach parties, the drugs and the boys—Australians, Americans, Europeans. It had been hard enough to get permission to come to Zanzibar, especially alone, but her parents had accepted her right to make a bid for independence.

“Ach!” shouted Anna, the second German girl, flailing her bare arms as she failed to make contact with a mozzie. “Scheisse!”

“Where are you staying, Alison?” asked the Danish boy, Lief, his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder.

Alison named a cheap hotel on the edge of Stone Town.

“You should move into Emerson’s House,” Lief’s girlfriend, Karin, advised. “That’s where we’re all staying. It’s really cool. Great chocolate cake…” She looked at Lief and for some reason they sniggered. Kristin and Anna joined in and soon they were all laughing, Alison included. Their combined laughter was so loud they couldn’t hear anything else.

People started to look, but, leaning in towards each other, they could only hear their own laughter.

Popo—the kid—picked up Craig outside Mazson’s at nine the next morning in a battered but just about roadworthy Suzuki Jeep.

“Jambo,” he said as Craig climbed in beside him. “Jozani Forest.”

“Jambo. Jozani Forest,” Craig confirmed their destination.

They rumbled out of town, which became gradually more ramshackle as they approached the outskirts. Popo used the horn every few seconds to clear the road of cyclists, who were out in the hundreds. No one resented being ordered to make way, Craig noticed, as they would back home. Popo’s deft handling took the Jeep around potholes and, where they were too big to be avoided, slowly through them. Most of the men in the streets wore long flowing white garments and skull caps; as they got further out of town, the Arabic influence became less pronounced. The women here wore brightly coloured kikois and carried unfeasibly large bags and packages on their heads. Orderly crowds of schoolgirls in white headgear and navy tunics streamed into schools that appeared to be no more than collections of outbuildings.

Between the villages, banana plantations ran right up to the edge of the road. Huge bunches of green fruit pointed up to the sky, brown raffia-like leaves crackled in the Jeep’s draught.

“You look for Red Colobus monkey?” Popo asked without taking his eye off the road.

“I told you last night,” Craig reminded him. “Zanzibar leopard. I’m looking for the leopard.”

“No leopard here,” Popo shook his head.

“I heard the witch doctors keep them.”

“No leopard.”

“There are witch doctors, then?”

Popo didn’t say anything as they passed through another tiny village, crowds of little children too small to be in school running up to the Jeep and waving at Craig, old men sat under a shelter made out of dried palm leaves. The children shouted after them: “Jambo, jambo!” Craig waved back.

“In Jozani Forest…” Popo said slowly, “Red Colobus monkey. Only here on Zanzibar.”

“I know,” said Craig, wiping his forearm across his slippery brow. “And the leopards? The witch doctors? I have to find them.”

“No leopard here.”

He wasn’t going to get much more out of Popo, that was clear. When the kid swung the Jeep off the road, he reacted swiftly by grabbing his arm, but they had only pulled into the carpark for the forest. He let go of the kid’s arm.

“Sorry. Took me by surprise.”

Popo blinked slowly.

“No leopard here,” he repeated.

The noise of the boat’s engine, a constant ragged chugging, made conversation impossible. There was no point trying to make yourself heard, but that didn’t stop Lief from occasionally mouthing easily understood remarks about the choppiness of the water, the heat of the sun.

The others—Karin, Anna, Kristin and Alison—grinned and nodded, although Alison’s grin was a little forced. Her trip to Prison Island was already going to exact a price, even though it was only supposed to be a half-hour hop: Alison could barely walk through a puddle without getting seasick. As the 25-foot wooden craft took another dive off the top of the next crest, she lurched forward and felt her stomach do the same, only, it seemed, without stopping. She retched, assumed the crash position, fully expecting to be ditched in the drink. It didn’t happen. The boat lumbered up the next heavy swell, perched an instant at its arête, and plummeted into the trough. Alison groaned.

The two Danes were chattering excitedly in their own tongue, clearly having a ball. When she looked up, Alison saw Anna and Kristin smiling down at her. “Are you okay?” one of them asked and Alison just managed to shake her head. “It’s not far to the island,” Anna said, looking forward, but the boat pitched to port, throwing her off her feet. She tumbled into Alison’s lap, Alison dry-retching once again.